How To Get a Facebook Email Invite Right Now?

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Although Facebook said you have to wait for an invite either through facebook.com or from one of your friends who have some invites to be sent to his/her friends.
But If you are eager and want the invite as early as possible, Facebook has set up a page where you can request the social networking website to send an invite to you.

Request a Facebook Invite

Once you are on the page, just hit “Request” at the bottom right of the box, you can just wait as according to the Facebook, you will be receiving an invite soon.

Also, if you are in desperate need of an invite, there are some folks on ebay selling the invite for around $0.99, not sure if anybody has received any invite yet from the auction, but you can give it a try.

Facebook Email aka Gmail Killer ..??

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Review courtesy Search Engine Land

At one end of the spectrum, Facebook says it’s “simple” and “fun.” On the other end, some are saying it’s Facebook’s version of Google Wave. And just about everyone spent the weekend suggesting that it’s a “Gmail killer.”

“It” is Facebook’s new, Whatever-you-do-don’t-call-it-email-but-hey-here’s-a-Facebook-email-address-for-you email and messaging system. Facebook says it’s more like chat; and it’s definitely not an email killer.

Who’s right? We’ll all decide that collectively as the invites get sent out. Until then, here’s how Facebook’s new Messages system works, via a screenshot-filled PDF distributed at today’s news conference.

How Do I Get The New Facebook Messages?

The new Messages is being rolled out “gradually,” as in over several months. Facebook users can request an invite and cross their fingers. When you’re in, you’ll see a pop-up window like this:

Clicking on that “See What’s New” button will take you to another page where you can review the basics of the new Messages and confirm that you want it.

How Do I Get A Facebook Email Address?

Once you’ve received your invite and confirmed that you want the new Messages system, Facebook will invite you to claim your Facebook.com email address. It’ll match your current Facebook username. (If you don’t have one of those, you can get one at the same time.)

After I’m In, How Does The New Messages Work?

One of the immediate changes you’ll notice after you start using the new Facebook Messages is the naming of your inboxes/folders. Rather than the current “messages” and “updates” naming scheme, the new Messages just uses “messages” and “other.” You’ll first see the “Messages” box, and that’s where Facebook says it’ll prioritize all the messages from your friends. Everything else gets sent to the “other” folder — that includes messages from Facebook Groups and from Pages that you’ve liked.

Another big change is the integration of messages into one system. If you have a Facebook.com email and use Facebook’s chat tool, all of this comes together the way Facebook wants. If you provide your phone number, you can bring SMS messages into the system, too. This screenshot shows how messages will appear in both the main in box and in Facebook Chat, and you can reply from either interface:

As you can see on that image, there’s also a new tool to include attachments with messages. (see the small icon on the far left below “Write a reply…”)

And, yes, there’s a search element here, too. Facebook says it has “revamped” how message search works. You can search for either the person you were chatting with or for the topics you were talking about. You can also add people to conversations, remove yourself, or forward conversations to others.

Is Facebook Messages Private?

There are a number of Q&As related to privacy in the Facebook help topic for the new Messages system. By default, anyone on Facebook can still send you a message and, if you get a Facebook.com email address, anyone else with an email address can email you if they know your Facebook.com address. But you can change that via the privacy settings for your Facebook account; the options for who can send you messages are “everyone,” “friends,” and “friends of friends.”

You can also choose who to share your Facebook.com email address with, but keep in mind that any thinking person will know that your email address is the same as your Facebook username.

What If My Friends Don’t Have It Yet?

Once you’re in the new Messages system, you’ll have a number of invites that you can share with friends. Just like, errrr … Gmail.

iPhone 4 is here..

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Review Courtesy Gizmodo

The design

The hardware design hasn't changed from the one we already knew about. It uses the same materials as the prototype: Black glass and stainless steel rim. It fits with the rest of the Apple product line, from the hard edges to the Dieter-Ramsesque utilitarianism of the iMac and the iPad.

The black glass is aluminosilicate glass. Apple claims this glass is "chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic." According to them, this makes it more scratch resistant and durable than the previous generation.

The size is smaller than the previous generation: 34% thinner than the iPhone 3GS. Although it is 3 grams heavier. According to Apple, it's the thinnest smartphone ever. It has split buttons for volume, unlike the current iPhone 3GS, all made in stainless steel.

The stainless steel rim
The stainless steel rim gives the structure to the iPhone, and acts as part of the antenna for 3G and Wi-Fi. In theory, this will greatly increase the reception abilities of the new iPhone 4.

Physical size
The iPhone 4 is 4.5 x 2.31 inches, and 0.37 inches thick. It weighs 4.8 ounces (137 grams).

The hardware

The new big brain
It has an Apple A4 chip inside, just like the iPad. Inside the A4 there are a few interconnected chips: A Cortex-A8 main processor unit—the main brain—paired with a PowerVR SGX 535, which handles the high definition graphics of the new iPhone. These are directly connected with each other and two low-power 128MB DDR SDRAM chips. Since all these components are in the same chip, Apple claims the iPhone 4 can process data more quickly while consuming less battery than before.

The A4 also consumes less power because its sub-components can be switched on and off when they are not needed, shaving watts whenever it's possible.

Battery life
The battery is 16% bigger than the current one. Coupled with the A4 processor and new display, it results in a longer battery life: Apple claims 40% more talk time. Here are their figures:

• Talk over 3G: 7 hours.
• Browsing over 3G: 6 hours.
• Browsing over Wi-Fi: 10 hours.
• Video: 10 hours.
• Music: 40 hours.
• Stand-by: 300 hours.

The display
The 3.5-inch multitouch screen has a resolution of 960 × 640 pixels. Apple calls is the Retina Display, and it has four times as many pixels as the current iPhone 3GS' display. The screen has 326 pixel per inch resolution, a higher definition than your typical magazine, a quality that shows in the screenshot.

Apple claims that this IPS-based display—the same technology as used in the iPad—also has 800-to-1 contrast ratio which is four times better than the 3GS, with a higher viewing angle.

The apps will take automatic advantage of the increased relative resolution, which mean they will be a lot sharper for text, 3D graphics, and vectorial art. However, developers will need to include higher resolution bitmap images to make the app look perfect.

Like the iPhone 3GS and the iPad, the display has an oleophobic layer that makes it easier to clean.

The main camera
The new iPhone has a bigger sensor for the main camera. It's backlit and has bigger lenses too. Instead of having a higher resolution, however, the sensor maintains the same 5 megapixel count. They are bigger dots, however, so it has a higher ISO—or sensitivity to light. That means that you would be able to take better photos and video in low light conditions, and your pictures will look a lot better.

The camera also has a LED-based flash, which works both for photographs and video. To focus, both for photographs and video—you just need to tap on the screen.

The video conferencing camera
In the front, there's a video conference camera, with standard VGA resolution. This camera will be used with third-party applications, as well as Apple's own video conference solution.

Gyroscope
The new iPhone 4 has a gyroscope built-in. This means that it can track movement with a very high precision, much higher than the built-in accelerometers in the previous iPhones. It's 3-axis, so it's capable of detecting pitch, roll, and yaw. Couple with the accelerometer, you have 6-axis motion sensing.

Other
• Like the iPad 3GS, the new iPhone uses the new micro-SIM standard.
• It has an additional microphone on the top used for noise cancelation.

The software

iOS4
The new iPhone 4 comes with iOS 4, a new moniker for the iPhone OS. The biggest new feature is, of course, selective multi-tasking, Apple's way to multitask some application features without consuming too many resources and battery power.

The new iOS 4 supports Apple's Retina display using resolution independence. This means that applications will automatically get scaled for the new resolution, but looking sharper, not pixelated. That includes typography, 2D vector graphics, and 3D graphics. However, developers will have to include higher resolution images for buttons or other screen controls (something that many have already, since this was already exposed in the last WWDC).

Video calling
However, the biggest feature of the new iPhone 4 is probably video calling, thanks to its front camera. Apple calls it FaceTime, and it works iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi—at least for 2010. Apple claims that in the future it will be available over 3G.

The iPhone 4 can use both cameras for video calling, so you can broadcast what is in front of you to another iPhone 4.

iMovie for iPhone
The new iPhone 4 will be able to use a new editing software from Apple: iMovie for iPhone. It comes with 1,500 new features.

The new iMovie for iPhone works on even 720p high definition. You can use it to cut the video clips, add automatic Ken Burns effects for still images and a music soundtrack taken from your iPhone's tunes. After you are done with your movie, you can export it to 360p, 520p, and 720p.

It's a separate application, however, it doesn't come built-in with the iPhone 4.

iBooks
iBooks will also be available for the new iOS4. Apple claims that the new iPhone 4's 325 pixel-per-inch display will make the books perfectly readable. It will use the same controls as the iBooks application in the iPad.

Price and availability

The Phone 4 will be available in black or white on June 24, and will cost $199 and $299 for 16 and

32GB if you are a new user or you are eligible for an upgrade.

If you are an existing iPhone user, the early upgrade will cost you $399 and $499. Without contract the iPhone 4 is $599 and $699.

A glimpse of iPhone 4.0 OS 4

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Review courtesy Gizmodo

The curtain has been pulled back on iPhone 4, and the list of new features is massive: There's multitasking (finally!), a refreshed interface, and literally hundreds of other changes, all coming this summer. Here's the rundown.

The new OS will ship in June (Fall for iPad, and a developer preview is available today, so we can expect to have plenty of apps updated and ready for launch.

New Features: Multitasking, App Folders and More

• Multitasking: It's here, finally. It's handled with a simple task switcher: double click your home button, and you get a list of running apps. Select, switch, done. Multitasking is limited to audio streaming, VoIP and GPS apps, as well as a few other allowances: they can finish specific, important tasks in the background, for example. As far as non-music/nav/VoIP apps, those can be suspended in the background, but not left running. (See below.) Full details here.

• Fast app switching: With iPhone 4's multitasking, most apps aren't actually running in the background—just certain functions of the app, like an audio stream or a GPS lock. But! All apps can now be frozen, in full, so that when you reopen them, they're restored to exactly the state they were in when they were closed.

• Local notifications: Notifications can be sent between apps on the phone, not just from remote servers. In other words, if something important happens in an app you've opened and moved away from, a notification will pop up in whatever app you're using at the time, effectively saying "switch back to me!" It's a fairly clever way to keep track of multiple apps without the need for a start bar or dock-type interface. From Apple's dev guidelines:

The advantage of local notifications is that they are independent of your application. Once a notification is scheduled, the system manages the delivery of it. Your application does not even have to be running when the notification is delivered.

Apple's official line:

iPhone OS 4's new multitasking offers users a new way to quickly move between apps, and provides developers seven new multitasking services to easily add multitasking features to their apps. These services include background audio, so apps like Pandora can play music in the background, and VoIP, so VoIP apps can receive a VoIP call even when the iPhone is asleep or the user is running other apps. iPhone OS 4 provides multitasking to third party apps while preserving battery life and foreground app performance, which has until now proved elusive on mobile devices.

And some more technical details, again from Apple's developer guidelines:

An application can request a finite amount of time to complete some important task. An application can declare itself as supporting specific services that require regular background execution time. An application can use local notifications to generate user alerts at designated times, whether or not the application is running.

• App folders: Now you can sort your apps into folders! That's homescreen clutter solved, just like that. Apple's description:

Folders help users better organize and quickly access their apps. Simply drag one app icon onto another, and a new folder is automatically created. The folder is automatically given a name based on the App Store category of that app, such as "Games," which the user can easily rename. Using folders, users can now organize and access over 2,000 apps on their iPhone.

2160, to be exact.

• A new Mail app: Unified inboxes, multiple Exchange accounts, fast inbox switching, threaded messages: These new features are actually a huge deal, since the iPhone's mail client has barely changed since 2007, and Apple doesn't allow alternative mail apps. Apple's pitch:

iPhone OS 4 delivers the best mail experience on a mobile phone with its new Unified Inbox, allowing users to see messages from all their email accounts displayed together in a single inbox. With just a few taps, users can quickly switch between inboxes to see messages from any single account.

• iBooks: Oh hey, that iBooks ebook reader app and accompanying ebook store we first met on the iPad has ambled on down to the iPhone. Nice, since you can now take your books with you wherever you go, as oppose to wherever you go with your iPad.

• Custom backgrounds: Jailbreakers have them. Hell, the iPad has them. Now you can choose a persistent background for your iPhone—and not just for the lockscreen.

• Game Center: Apple's going to roll out a centralized gaming service—a multiplayer network like PSN or Xbox Live—to help connect games to one another, by the end on the year. There are 3rd-party services that already do this, like OpenFeint. They will probably die. Full details here.

• iAd advertising: It looks like Apple's finally making use of Quattro, that mobile ad company it gobbled up a few months ago, by rolling out its own advertising platform, a turnkey ad plugin for app developers called iAd. The theory here is that instead of relying on links to external websites, which pull users out of apps whenever they tap on an ad, developers can use Apple's new tools to keep people in the app while still showing them advertising—sort of like popover browser windows. You can watch videos, play games, and even buy apps from within these ads. This is in the iPhone OS 4 developer tools, but it's not explicitly a part of OS 4, so you won't see apps with iAds until later this year.

• 5x digital zoom: Could this hint at a higher quality camera in the next hardware? 3.2 megapixels seems a bit low for 5x digital zoom.

• Bluetooth keyboards: Another carryover from the iPad, Bluetooth keyboard support will finally come to iPhone 4.

• A bevy of other new developer features, including 1500 new APIs to play with:

Which Devices Get It, and When?

When the software ships in the summer, iPhone 3GSes and iPod Touch 3rd-gens devices will get all of the new features. The iPhone 3G and Touch 2G will get "many things," which doesn't include multitasking. I repeat: the iPhone 3G won't get multitasking, ever. iPhone 2Gs will be left on a hillside somewhere to die of exposure, or something.

Apple didn't drop any clues about the next iPhone's hardware, but it's a fair bet that we'll see some changes come June.

What About the iPad?

The iPad won't get the 4.0 upgrade until Fall of this year, a few months after the iPhone does. So, you'll be able to multitask on your dinky little iPhone before you'll be even be able to listen to Pandora and check your email at the same time on your giant iPad.

Google Buzz | Wondering wot d Buzz is all abt??

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First Crush Rating ( * * * * )

Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It's built right into Gmail, so you don't have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. Google focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don't have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.

On your phone, Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question "where were you when you shared this?" can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place. Check out the Mobile Blog for more info about all of the ways to use Buzz on your phone, from a new mobile web app to a Buzz layer in Google Maps for mobile.

Google relied on other services' openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. Google is building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API, and invites developers to join them on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate.

BuZZ Tips and Tricks courtesy think digit

Google buzz is here to stay. Sure, it may not be the next Facebook or a Twitter replacement, but surely as a social media tool it has its pluses. Those of you who have been using it for a while now, will find these tips useful. Those who are not buzzing, there's no better time to start.

1. Send @ replies without knowing the persons email id.

Buzz allows you to tag people in your buzz posts by inserting an '@' sign in the post. This opens a drop down menu of all your contacts and you can add the contact you were looking for. The buzz post will then be automatically be emailed to the inbox of the person mentioned. However, what about people who are not in your contact list, and you are just commenting on their post? Simply hover over their name and in the browser's notification area you will see a link to their Google profile. It will be something like this: http://www.google.com/profiles/abcdef#buzz. Just copy the part before #buzz and sufix it with @gmail.com. In this example that would be @abcdef@gmail.com

2. Search tips

To search for comments from a specific user, try this operator "commenter:name” in the buzz search field. Use “author:name” to find all posts composed by a user. Similarly you can use “has:photo” or “has:video/link” to filter posts that have the respective attachments. This is quite a neat tool to discover active buzz users. The “source” operator will allow you to restrict the sources eg. Twitter, reader, flickr etc.

3. Share any webpage on google buzz

Found something interesting in the vastness of cyberspace which you'd like to share on Buzz? As a Chrome user, you can do it in a jiffy with the Buzz it! [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mlbimplbdkhjjfhnlmhjnoemmnnehjif] extension. Once you decide to share something clicking on this button will bring up a dialogue box where you can give a title and add a note about the piece you are sharing. Click Post item and it gets added to your buzz stream via reader. For Firefox users there is a much more popular addon by the same name[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/75917 ]. This addon posts via the buzz@gmail.com email route. However at the time of writing this article the extension was not working :-(

4. Send buzz posts to twitter

Sending your twitter feed to Google Buzz is quite a simple matter. Simply go to settings tab and under the newly added buzz tab, you can link your twitter account. But pushing buzz posts into twitter is a bit of a tricky affair. There are two ways of doing this by using two different online apps. Each has its own advantages. The first is buzzcantweet [buzzcantweet.com]. Click on get started and it will prompt you to sign in with your google account. Next allow the app access through the twitter api and you're done. Some of the additional options on the settings page allow you to use your own Bit.ly account for link generation and...

Tweet only buzz which contains keyword "#twitter"
Exclude text after keyword
No link on short messages

The other option is to use Buzz2Twitter [http://reader2twitter.appspot.com/buzz] - A little difficult to set up but not rocket science. I noticed the Buzz2Twitter sync has lesser lag - probably to do with the pubsubhubbub protocol that it uses. To get started you need your Google Profile Number ID. Usually your Google profile with look like this https://www.google.com/profiles/yourname. To get your number ID click “edit profile” on your profile page. At the bottom of the page you'll find your profile URL; click “see other options”. Copy the number, paste it here [http://reader2twitter.appspot.com/buzz] and click submit. By default it uses goog.le to link to your buzz post but you can use your own bit.ly account too.

Getting your Google profile id number

Advantages of posting to twitter from buzz:

You can use buzz as your own very own Twitter image / link / video sharing service since all your twitter posts will be permalinked back to your image enhanced buzz posts!

No restriction of character count!

5. Keyboard shortcuts

Simply make sure keyboard shortcuts are enabled in your settings

Shift+l - 'like' a post

m - mute a thread (very useful if you don't want a popular thread to highjack your timeline)

r - reply to a post

j/k - go to the newer / older posts

o - expand post

# Bonus Tip: Import twitter contacts

Still in closed beta, but once it's up you can use this service to import twitter contacts to follow them on buzz. http://tw2buzz.com/. Be sure to register for an invite.

The author is a buzz enthusiast (for now) and is saddened by the fact that most content shared via buzz, twitter, and Facebook stands in this ratio:

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